Well, A Bug's Life is now available for general consumption. But why am I writing a review of a cartoon? There are a couple of reasons. After watching the movie I made a quick comment about it to our humble (and lovable) web host. He wrote back and asked me to flesh it out to a more accepted review length. I must admit I've always felt that anyone dumb enough to ask for my opinion deserved to get it. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought this is the perfect opportunity to vent my spleen about something that has bothered me for years.

First off, to put it in blanket terms, A Bug's Life was cute. I'm not rushing out to buy it; nor am I likely to watch it again. But it was cute. It was also better than Antz. In case you're a Southern Baptist, I should probably give a (very) brief background to these two movies. Pixar is a small company which is well vested in venture capital. For our purposes here, Pixar makes movies that are entirely computer generated - no actors, no film, and no Korean illustrators. The principles were first used in a Hollywood movie 20 or so years ago in Battle Beyond the Planets (if memory serves). Tron came along shortly after and convinced Hollywood that computer animation wasn't quite ready for prime time. (I'll catch it for this one, but I'll say it anyway. Tron, while a great idea, suffered on two fronts: 1930's B-movie makeup and 1930's B-movie dialogue. The concept was great, but the execution was just exactly that...an execution.)

At any rate, Pixar is, to my knowledge, the first company to produce a full-length movie using nothing but computer generated graphics. This cannot have been a cheap undertaking. So they show their work to Disney. After all, Disney has the money, the reputation, the network, and the marketers. Of course, they're also evil incarnate because they happen to hold the philosophy that homosexuals just might be human beings, and therefore I have to explain all this here in case a Southern Baptist has (accidentally) stumbled onto this page. In fact, I should probably just go ahead and note in big, flashing letters IF YOU'RE SOUTHERN BAPTIST, DO NOT READ THIS! IT'S EVIL! But I digress...

The animation is identical to that of Antz (which is not hard to do when you use the same species as the heroes), but the scenes are sometimes laid out to better effect. For the ultimate demonstration of the animation, watch the two scenes that show a closeup of a dandelion head. They're short, but effective. The problem with this regard is that the writers are still having trouble thinking outside the box. They grew up with standard 2-D animation, and it shows. In fact one panning scene looks like they used three painted mats moving at different speeds in the background to create perspective, rather than the full 3-D rendering they had at their disposal. It's so glaring, I have to believe they did it on purpose, in an effort to look more like a traditional cartoon. That's the mistake. In the early decades of this century, animators quickly learned they could show things that could not be filmed otherwise. They also learned they could show common things from otherwise impossible perspectives. This was what made animation great. Early cartoon audiences got to see Gertie the dinosaur in motion. They also got to see the rabbit's home in a cut-away view. Cell animators had problems with scenes which contained a lot of moving components. That's why they developed tricks to simulate more complex movement while saving the drawing of thousands of cells. They learned to think outside the box. Pixar's artists are going to have to do that and quit aping traditional animation.

So in all we had a moderately entertaining movie with state of the art effects. The story has enough humor to keep the adults from nodding off, and enough slapstick to keep the kids rolling in the floor. There are no booger jokes, bad language, or scatological references, so you don't have to worry about the younger kids picking up bad habits. All in all it's a rather pleasant way to spend an hour and a half with the whole family in the presence of pure evil. There's one other thing about this Disney movie that I appreciated. Disney had nothing to do with making it. All they did was buy into its success or failure. That explains why it's a pretty good movie, but was marketed at McDonalds and tapes are sold in four collector boxes.

My problem with Disney has nothing at all to do with their humanity to man. Rather, I object to their formulaic, cookie-cutter mentality for producing animated movies. Am I the only one bothered by the "Instant Classic"? All Disney releases can be broken into two categories. "Holiday Classics" are released within a month of a holiday - any holiday. I heard one touted as a "Holiday Classic" the other day. The only holiday coming up on my calendar is Memorial Day, so I guess that qualifies. It reminds me of It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown. The other broad classification is reserved for movies that are released outside of the four-week window for any American holiday. These are known as "Family Classics." I grew up on Pinocchio, Snow White, Dumbo, and the like. They were wonderful. They were classics. They were old. They had earned the name "Classic" by remaining popular for years. Disney is being extremely presumptuous to assume every little thing they deign to foist on the buying public deserves to be called a classic before all the cells are back from the Pacific Rim.

I also have one other minor problem with Disney. I am tired of absolutely every character having a Southern California accent. This is even more exacerbated when their voice suddenly changes to that of Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, or Brandy when they spontaneously burst into song about the importance of saving the earth. Has it occurred to you that you haven't heard the Back Street Boys or New Kids on the Block (to add a little historical perspective) singing a Disney signature hit? That's because while singing groups like that may be immensely popular, they don't fit Disney's formula. I don't relish having to sit through the Back Street Boys singing at a show tune - it just illustrates my point. Having a group sing doesn't work within the Disney formula. Collectors Hercules plates at McDonalds does. This is a formula that is as studied, staid, and stale as any in use on a sitcom today. In fact, it's staler than the Echevarrian formulae employed in the various Star Trek franchises, and that's going a ways.

There is one last aspect of this movie which at first bothered me. If you haven't seen it and don't like spoilers, skip to the last paragraph. I was bothered that their final solution was to lure the grasshopper to his death. My first thought was that if they had been people, Disney never would have allowed that solution. But of course, we're not talking about a Disney movie in this case. Pixar may very well show graphic human violence in a future release. Initially I thought they should have used a different ending, showing the ants outsmarting the grasshopper, intellect defeating brawn, and so on. That makes for a cleaner morality play. On further reflection, however, I decided that the movie actually works better this way. I'm tired of morality plays (too much Star Trek over the years). The ants did indeed outsmart the grasshopper, and his monosyllabic IQ led to his demise. Perhaps it's still a morality play, but it's not a nice one.

So in conclusion, while the first two releases from Pixar are worth a look - especially A Bug's Life - beware of subsequent releases. Now that they have bedded down with Disney, we will quite likely see Pixar releases come complete with soundtracks, more McDonalds tie-ins, musical soliloquies, and that peculiar revisionist outlook which defines Disney productions today. The best we can hope for is the continued independence of Pixar, with the idea that they will continue to develop what is indeed a huge potential for producing a new type of animation. I don't really care if they sell the finished product to Disney - let them market it any way they see fit. Just don't let them have a hand in developing the projects.